Destroyer (Solo)

November 18th, 2023 @ 7:00pm PST

Destroyer (Solo)
About this event

SATURDAY NOVEMBER 18TH 2023

Support from Jared Jackel's Bad Vibrations

Destroyer’s latest album, LABYRINTHITIS, brims with  mystic and intoxicating terrain, the threads of Dan Bejar’s notes woven through by a trove of allusions at once eerily familiar and intimately perplexing.

The record circuitously draws ever inward, each turn offering giddy surprise, anxious esoterica, and thumping emotionality at equal odds. “Do you remember the mythic beast?” Bejar asks at the outset  of “Tintoretto, It’s for You,” the album’s first single, casting  torchlight over the labyrinth’s corridors. “Tintoretto, it’s  for you/ The ceiling’s on fire and the contract is binding.”  Delivered in a Marlene Dietrich smolder, Bejar’s lyrical menace seeps like smoke through the brazen march’s  woozy synths and dizzied guitar. “There’s some character here that feels new to me, a low drawl, an evening gown draped over a piano,” Bejar says of the song.

Throughout, LABYRINTHITIS insists that everything’s not all right, but  that even isolation and dissolution can be a source of joy— stepping into the sunlight at the other end of the maze in  your ear, Bejar strolling alongside like a wild-maned, leisure suited minotaur. More than an arcane puzzle for the listener, LABYRINTHITIS warps and winds through unfamiliar territory for Bejar as  well. Written largely in 2020 and recorded the following  spring, the album most often finds Bejar and frequent collaborator John Collins seeking the mythic artifacts buried  somewhere under the dance floor, from the glitzy spiral of  “It Takes a Thief” to the Books-ian collage bliss of the title  track. Initial song ideas ventured forth from disco, Art of  Noise, and New Order, Bejar and Collins championing the  over-the-top madcappery. “John is in his 50s, and I’m almost  there, but we used to go to clubs,” Bejar laughs. “Our version may have been punk clubs, but our touchstones for the album  were more true to disco.”  Bejar and Collins conducted their questing in the height  of isolation, Collins on the remote Galiano Island and  Bejar in nearby Vancouver, sending ideas back and forth  when restrictions didn’t allow them to meet. “From the  vocal manipulation to the layered electronics, making this  record pushed us to a new place, and reaching that place  felt stressful,” Bejar recalls. “But I trust that that stress is a  good feeling.” That cuddly anxiety excels in tracks like “Eat  the Wine, Drink the Bread,” Joshua Wells’ percussion and  Collins’ drum programming pushing Bejar’s voice forward.  “The whole world’s a stage/ That I don’t know/ I am going  through,” he sighs, before reaching the frustrated religious  imagery of the title.  Lyrically, LABYRINTHITIS embraces a widescreen  maximalism, blocks of text dotted with subversions  and hedges. Building from the koans of Have We Met,  Bejar continues to carve his words precisely, toying with  expectations and staid symbols, while Collins’ production  reconstructs the pieces into a unified whole. “Even though  everyone recorded in their own isolated corners, this is the  most band record that we’ve done in the last few years,”  Bejar says. “Everything’s manipulated, but the band is really  present, and our plans wound up betrayed by what the tracks  wanted. I’ve written 300, 400 songs in my adult life—I don’t  know how to do anything else—but this album feels like a  breakthrough into new territory.”  That unprepared synchronicity and mutual discovery shines  brightest on “June,” a six-and-a-half-minute track that features  a blend of funk bass, fluttering synth, and charred poetry  recitation. While Bejar initially envisioned LABYRINTHITIS as a straight dance record (“just like Donna Summer’s greatest  hits”), the end of “June” explodes that simplicity into a million  shining pieces, finding joy in mutual discovery instead of  isolated certainty. Bejar and Collins’ initial jam expands  until the edges of the universe run through their fingertips,  the band members peeling off in cathartic helixes. While the  album’s songs may have been patched together like a mosaic  of enigmatic ideas, the band rolls the entire Destroyer universe  together—abstruse celestial waves unified despite the players’  physical time apart.  LABYRINTHITIS closes on “The Last Song,” Bejar singing  and strumming all alone, a gentle yet no more settled exodus  out of the fractured dance party. “I try and sneak in sweet  moments where I can,” Bejar laughs. After spending the record  in the depths of the labyrinth, Destroyer step into the open air, overwhelmed by the burst of light surrounding them. “An  explosion is worth a hundred million words/ But that is maybe  too many words to say,” Bejar repeats, the roiling electronics  replaced with a single ringing guitar echoing into the night.  As LABYRINTHITIS closes, the reorienting vertigo lingers, its implacable aura and bewitching lyrics wriggling ever deeper into the mind.


19+ event

Where
Revelry Music + Food Hub
1383 Ellis St.
Kelowna, BC
View Map
When
November 18th, 2023 @ 7:00pm PST
© 2025 Revelry Food+Music Hub
Welcome!
By using this website, you agree to our use of cookies. We utilize cookies to give you the best experience and to make our website operate effectively. Read our Privacy Policy